A future Labour government will ‘break up’ banks that refuse to separate their retail and investment arms, repeal the NHS bill and reinstate the 50p top rate of tax, Ed Miliband has said as his party’s conference got underway in Manchester.

Ed Miliband has warned that Labour will ‘break up’ banks if they refuse to change (Picture: PA)

The Labour leader said the country’s largest banks had to ’embrace the change Britain needs’ and end the ‘infection of retail banking by the culture of casino banking’.

The coalition government has said it will implement the recommendations of the Vickers report that called for banks to be separated into high street and investment divisions.

But the government’s pledge to implement the ‘radical reform’ by 2019 was not good enough, Mr Miliband said, pledging to pass legislation forcing banks to do so after the 2015 general election.

In a bid to create clear dividing lines between the opposition and the government, the Labour leader also promised to reverse the NHS bill and the reduction in the top rate of tax to 45p in the pound.

‘Next April David Cameron will be writing a cheque to each and every millionaire in Britain for £40,000,’ he told BBC1’s Andrew Marr Show.

‘If I was in government tomorrow one change I would make in relation to the better off – first change in a Labour budget – we wouldn’t be cutting the top rate of income tax from 50 to 45p.

‘If there was an election tomorrow that is what we would do.’

Ed Miliband speaks to Andrew Marr at the start of the Labour Party autumn conference in Manchester (Picture: Reuters/BBC)

Despite yesterday seeming to say it would not be ‘sensible’ to spend £3billion on reversing the government’s health service reforms, Mr Miliband continued: ‘We will repeal their NHS bill. It puts the wrong principles back at the heart of the NHS, it puts the principles of competition, markets and money as the central defining principles of the NHS.’

The Labour leader, who said shadow chancellor Ed Balls would be ‘iron’ in his resistance to unrealistic spending commitments, added that his brother David, who he defeated in a leadership contest two years ago, was a ‘huge asset’ to the party.

His comments came as a poll commissioned by the Conservative Party said 65 per cent of Labour supporters thought David Miliband, who rejected a chance to be in the shadow cabinet, would be a better leader.

But shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper told Sky News’s Murnaghan programme that Labour was a ‘strong, united party’.

‘Time and again I think Ed is talking about the things that people are worried about across the country, and saying what needs to happen for the future as well,’ she said.

Mr Miliband himself added: ‘This is a party that is a more united party than any other in British politics. It hasn’t taken leave of its senses or leave of the electorate.

‘We are a party on the way back. We have a long way to go but I feel quite confident about our position – knowing there is a huge mountain to climb, but knowing we are scaling it.’